The UnWikiLeaks: New York Times Reporter Stumbles Upon Damning Classified Iraq Docs

ACCIDENTAL SECRETS-BUSTING

The UnWikiLeaks: New York Times Reporter Stumbles Upon Damning Classified Iraq Docs

By Elizabeth C.

IF JUST ONCE LEAKED MILITARY DOCUMENTS REVEALED U.S. SOLDIERS going to extraordinary lengths to save civilians or guarantee justice, then we could buy the argument that ‘classified’ means more than travesty.

Yet the story never quite explains the context of how these victims came to be headless. It does reveal that the comment was found amid 400 pages of interrogations, as well as helicopter routes and radar capabilities, that were being used as kindle to cook a carp at a junkyard outside Baghdad. A Times‘
reporter discovered the documents inside a trailer carted to the location by an Iraqi contractor. The accidental discovery shows the roundabout way through which many news stories are discovered and makes WikiLeaks seem a veritable model of efficiency for spilling state and corporate secrets. Which no doubt is why the U.S. government has been intent on destroying the online whistleblowing outfit.

There is no shocking new information in the Times report, but the granular details reiterate the broad context of the mechanical coldness of the Iraqi War: a war of too many state-sanctioned murders protected by the “classified” label.

When the Times sought comment from the military on the discovered documents, military spokesman Col. Barry Johnson said: “Despite the way in which they were improperly discarded and came into your possession, we are not at liberty to discuss classified information. We take any breach of classified information as an extremely serious matter.”